How
To Analyze Website Traffic

Website
Traffic Basics:

How
visitors find your site

How
they use your site

How
this information can help improve your website

Some
free & paid traffic monitor tool recommendations

Analyzing
website traffic helps you learn who your website visitors are and
how they find and use your website. This helps you understand
what parts of your site are working, what you can do to increase
traffic to your website, and also where visitors might be having
problems.

Each
link from search engine results contain embedded
information that tells how visitors found you and what kind of software
they are
using. Every time a web browser connects to a website it sends
information about where it is connecting from, what kind of operating
system and which web browser it is using.

This
information is captured by website traffic monitors which sort and
organize the data for display in a variety of ways, such
as traffic
graphs and maps showing the locations of website visitors.

Website Traffic Graph

Website Visitor Map

Data
Displayed by Website Traffic Monitors:

How
visitors find you:

Keywords - The phrases that visitors types into the search
engines to find your website

Operating
System, Browser Brand & Browser
Version -
Knowing which software your visitors are using will tell you
which browsers to test your
website on.

Tcp/ip
address -
Shows where your visitors are located.

Basic
traffic stats:

Page views -
the number of individual pages viewed by all visitors combined.
You can
also view "page paths", the sequence
of
how those pages
were viewed, or how visitors move through your site.

Unique
visitors is actually the number of different locations
your traffic comes from and is usually determined
by
looking at the TCP/IP
addresses of the visitors, which shows their
location on the internet. Unique visitors is usually the most reliable
indicator statistic for the
popularity
of a website.

Repeat
visitors show how many unique visitors return to your website on
the same day after an interval
of usually
an hour
or more.

Detailed
traffic stats:

How
visitors move through & use your website

Page
paths - the pages visited in order, stating with the page
the visitors entered the site,
and also shows
any file
downloads or
link clicks.

Downloads -
any files downloaded from the site such as images or PDF files.

Time
spent on each page - each page view is time stamped
by the traffic monitor to
calculate
the time
spent on each page.
A page
that is mostly
viewed for a very short time might
indicate a problem with that page.

How
visitors Leave your website

Exit
pages - what is the last page that your visitors view on your website
before
they
select another
website?

Exit
links, also called "click-thrus" - do your
visitors leave your site via a link on your site
such as an ad, affiliate
link,
or a link
to your online
store?

Demographics
of your visitors

Sex

Age

Ethnic
background

Income

Education
level

Family
size

Website Page Path Example

This example from the StatCounter traffic
monitor tool shows a visitor from
Albuquerque, New Mexico who
arrived at the site (top) from Google on theFractal Bubbles page, then
visited several pages before
downloading
several images (in red) and
then left the site by clicking on an ad (in blue).

Knowing
who your visitors are as well as how they find
and use your site will help
you
build a
website that
meets
the needs
of your visitors,
and can attract an ever increasing amount of website
traffic.

Website
Traffic Analysis Tools

There
are many types of website traffic analysis tools. Here are the ones
we use.

StatCounter - The
easiest website traffic monitor to set up and use. StatCounter is
especially good for beginners because the information
is so
well
organized
and easy to understand. They have a free version which records
a limited amount of data, and then you can upgrade to the paid
version
to store more traffic data.

Google
Analytics - A
very powerful and
feature rich traffic
monitor. The amount
of data it provides
can be overwhelming,
so we recommend a
simpler traffic monitor
for getting started.

Quantcast is
a free website that tracks visitors and detailed
demographics
information and is
an excellent way to spy on the competition. Quantcast only has
data for websites
that get
a fair amount of
traffic.